A potential leadership contender for the federal Conservative Party says the Liberal government is right to end airstrikes against the Islamic State.
Celebrity investor Kevin O'Leary, the chair of O'Leary Financial Group and a Bell Media on-air contributor, told CTV’s Power Play Wednesday that Canada should stick to peacekeeping.
“Killing people is easy. Keeping the peace is very hard,” he said.
Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose has slammed the Liberal government for saying it will end the airstrikes by Feb. 22.
She has called it a “shameful step backward” for Canada.
O’Leary said Canada has a moral authority in the Middle East to be a peacekeeper -- a reputation gained in the 1960s and 1970s from United Nations peacekeeping missions in Jordan and Syria.
“Certainly to gain that trust, and to gain that moral authority, took decades and decades,” he said.
“We share that with the Finnish people. For us to suddenly decide we’re going to start killing people, and sharing in destruction and death, when we already have the moral right to be peacekeepers, is a unique situation that every country would honour.”
O’Leary said he doesn’t care if the Conservative Party disagrees with his position -- or any other federal party.
“It squares with the Canadian people. That’s what matters,” he said.
“If you ask 10 Canadians would they rather be global peacekeepers or would they rather be warmongers, I know their answer. And I’m one of them.”
